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PiGlass v2 is a remake of an older project on the Adafruit Learning System. I made v1 back in 2018 and ran into a lot of performance issues, so I couldn’t make it do everything I wanted it to.

When I heard that the Pi Zero 2 was coming out, I knew I had to try this again. My experience with v1 greatly assisted me in the process of making v2. I redesigned it completely and created new software.

The Pi is now located on the back strap of a hat. the audio hat has the exact output using a bone conduction transducer and the hat also has 2 mems microphones. I am using the same 5mp Zero spy cam in the same spot. There is an 8BitDo Bluetooth gamepad as the input device. The display is the same as before, a Vufine+ 720p HDMI display.

When assembled and setup, you can watch shows/movies/YouTube, play retro games, livestream, record videos and take different types of pictures. It takes longer to setup the software than it does to build one. At the heart of this project is a button on the audio hat which is at the back of the head. it does 2 things when pushed, it will either:

Start the launcher program
Kill any running programs
The launcher and camera related programs all use the gamepad for input. Kodi and Retropie use the gamepad as well and can be started from the launcher program. The commands are stored in a toml file that you can edit to customize what your PiGlass v2 does.”

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